Philosophy defends God

reply to post by NewAgeMan


Books are the worst kind of evidence you can come up with.

And before you say it - yes, I think the same of history books as well.

"What is history but a fable agreed upon?" - Napoleon Bonaparte

There are numerous other historians and respectable figures who have agreed with that particular sentiment. I think the movie 'The Book of Eli' demonstrated to perfection the flipside of what you're explaining here. A man was hunted by many people, because another man desired the last copy of the Bible. Why? Because it was a weapon of mass CONTROL. It was power on a piece of paper. And between power and peace, what will mankind choose? It's clear that no higher power has been overly protective of this world for the past few hundred years or so...and given his own devices, there are many men who would much rather stand on top than enjoy equal ground with his fellows.

And considering how much power a sacred text can give, especially with the ability to rewrite or omit at will, there's no question about it. The Bible is as effective as a nuclear weapon, because of the very nature by which it informs people. That much control over how people look at life...it's a deadly thing. Such power requires great responsibility, and looking around...

Well, I can't see a whole lot of responsibility taking place.

W.L. Craig states the argument as follow:

1) If God does not exist then objective moral values and duties do not exist

2) Objective moral values and duties do exist

3) Therefore God exists

This is a logically air-tight argument, i.e. if the premises are true then the conclusion is necessarily true. Craig says that this is actually the argument that convinces people the most because they usually have strong inhibitions against surrendering their views about atleast some moral values and duties being objective. For many people the knowledge of certain moral values and duties is properly basic. As for the first premise, it's validity should be perspicuous enough to anyone who understand the word objective to mean mind-independent in this context. For instance, imagine that the Nazis had managed to conquer the world and kill off and/or brainwash everyone who didn't agree with their philosophy. In this case, everyone alive would believe that it's morally acceptable to exterminate other people, etc. This illustrates how that if God does not exist, than moral values and duties are relative and entirely culture-dependent.

It really needs to be understood that philosophy cannot defend God and God needs not defending. Who are we to think that we can defend the Creator of the Universe? It is not man's thinking that proves God, but it is God that proves Himself; whether it be without us or through us.

Most of the posters here are making a valid point - most people have their own set of moral values and those moral values can be traced back to their particular culture.

However, what they're failing to recall is that everyone didn't just appear on this planet in their particular culture. Over time these cultures formed in their respective places. Their morals obviously changed as they separated - in fact, the separation into many different cultures is in large part because a body of people disagreed with a separate body of people. Some saw fit to stay put and others saw it their duty to move. There is a difference here that should be noted - but that difference is not necessarily evil because some are called to perform different duties, and those differently than others are called to perform.

The argument that there is no universal moral standard based on the current geological location of people is invalid. History records that people have moved, if you even needed written or oral history to figure that out. We know based on our own life experiences that people move around.

But I can give some examples of moral standards that no one can deny.

If you sleep with your neighbor's wife (and in today's society, sadly, I must add the terms "without his consent"), he will be jealous and jealousy is a burning that does not end. Nothing will ever make up for that and he will find you and harm you for it in some way, shape, or form.

If you steal from your neighbor, you obviously took something from him without his consent. Regardless of the benignity or the maliciousness of an individual, they will still perceive that you have trespassed against them. Nobody likes anything taken from them without their consent.

If someone asks you a question, they want the truth (with the exception of some men and women that are interested in vain things, like looks, how their music sounds, etc. - in these cases, people prefer dishonesty for the security of their ego - but in this instance the case is that the person asking is not interested in truth - which means that the person understands what truth is; which means that person is looking to make a fool out of both of you for the sake of their vanity - and the inevitable end is that people will go into public and portray their looks and their music and their art to the public based on the lie that they desired and will be ridiculed for it - only to wonder why? So this particular situation garners the negative result - which is undesired, which is further proof that the truth is naturally beneficial in that it can prevent long term negative consequences) --well that was quite a tangent, but back on point-- if someone asks you a question, they want the truth. If you lie to them, and they find out, which they will eventually, they will learn to distrust you. Distrust is a natural result of being betrayed. How people handle that distrust is specific to the individual; but the consequences are rarely ever conducive to the health of the liar.

Everyone that is hungry will desire food.
Everyone that is thirsty will desire drink.
Everyone that is suffering will desire rest.
Everyone that is working desires an increase (or reward).
Everyone that is crying desires comfort (which comes in many different forms).
Everyone that is angry desires a release (which comes in many different forms).
Everyone that is yelling desires to be heard.
Everyone that is walking desires to move.
Everyone that is reading desires information (for whatever use).
Everyone that is fighting desires to win.

God didn't just write down His moral standards in the form of words. He built them into nature.
You see, it is that desire that proves the morality exists. Now, whether someone chooses to obey the true morality instead of their own is a totally different story.
Do you feed the hungry?
Give the thirsty cold water to drink?
Do you forgive those that have guilt for their wrongs against you?
Do you give proper reward to those that serve you?
Do you comfort those who are sad?
Do you accept the lashings from an angry person, understanding their anger, and show them love to ease?
Do you listen to the yelling despite your suffering ear?
Do you help people cross those places they cannot traverse?
Do you make sure to write information that is worthy of reading - something beneficial, not divisive?
Do you allow the fighter to win so as to relieve the stress of the fighter - only to show them a better way?

You see, morality is not about written law. It is about loving God, yourself, and everyone else. It's a natural thing; not hard to discover or understand.

It's just a matter of taking action when you are called to it.

reply to post by dpeacock

]Premise 1 If God does not exist then absolute morale values do not exist

premise 2 If Absolute moral values exist then God exist

This is predicated on the premise God holds moral truths.

Why are we to conclude this for your other 2 premises?

reply to post by Benevolent Heretic

I added to my post. Let's take eating meat. To some, it's morally reprehensible, but to me, it's fine. If a Vegan were starving, he'd likely enjoy a large chunk of steak without compunction.

Well. I would (a vegetarian) eat meat in that case but it wouldn't just be for survival it would also be that I value my life above the meat. That would be moral reasoning as well

Originally posted by Benevolent Heretic
reply to post by dpeacock

 

Originally posted by dpeacock
even cannibalistic cultures do not eat there babies

That's not true. There are many cases of cannibals eating children and babies. I mean... if they're going to EAT PEOPLE, why would they discern?

Cannibalism is mentioned many times in early history and literature. It is reported in the Bible during the siege of Samaria (2 Kings 6:25–30). Two women made a pact to eat their children; after the first mother cooked her child the second mother ate it but refused to reciprocate by cooking her own child. A similar story is reported by Flavius Josephus during the siege of Jerusalem by Rome in 70 AD, and the population of Numantia during the Roman Siege of Numantia in the 2nd century BC was reduced to cannibalism and suicide.

Source

You know, you really can find just anything in the Bible. LOL!

2 Kings 6

25 And there was a great famine in Samaria: and, behold, they besieged it, until an ass's head was sold for fourscore pieces of silver, and the fourth part of a cab of dove's dung for five pieces of silver.

That's some expensive dove dung!

28 And the king said unto her, What aileth thee? And she answered, This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to day, and we will eat my son to morrow.

29 So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him: and she hath hid her son.

What is the greater crime, serving up her son in a pot, or the woman who lied about serving up her son?

It's a moral dilemma!

Kant tried to find a logical foundation for absolute values thru his en.wikipedia.org... He failed. For example, using the principles of the categorical imperative one must conclude that lying is ALWAYS wrong ( an absolute). However, if you are hiding Jews in your attic in Nazi Germany and the SS asks if there are any Jews in your house, it is obvious that the moral thing to do would be to say, “NO”!
Morals are absolute in that they are part of our being, as much as breathing and eating. However, there are biological explanations for breathing and eating that do not require appealing to a deity. Similarly, there are biological explanations for our ethics en.wikipedia.org... To act unethically is a mental illness. Like a man that refuses to eat or breathe.
God cannot be a foundation for ethics. Here is the argument, first the proposition that God is the foundation for ethics is provisionally accepted and then shown to contradict itself. Therefore, the original proposition cannot be true.
1. God is the foundation of ethics.
2. Therefore, what is right and wrong is totally dependent on the will of God and not on a code that God follows.
3. Therefore, if God decided that torturing babies was a good thing, torturing babies would be a good thing.
4. One cannot object that God would never make such a horrendous decision because that presupposes an ethical code that precedes God and as proposition 1 says, nothing transcends the authenticity of God’s ethical pronouncements or dictates to God what is right and wrong.
I believe in absolute values. Torturing babies is wrong. However, looking to God for an explanation for ethics involves an infinite regress and so therefore explains nothing. My values are based on my humanity and are as undebatable as my need for water and oxygen.
To make my point boldly, values are ultimately a subject for biology and are as irrefutable as metabolism
PS; For some reason the two sites I gave did not work perfectly. Simply click on that site (for example “categorical imperative” and then click where it says “categorical imperative”and then click on the first site called "categorical imperative") Very weird this computer stuff!!!

reply to post by dpeacock


Excellent proof for the existence of god! So, when would you like to hold prayer for Lord Ba'al, the one and only god?

reply to post by Wandering Scribe


So funny and so true

I say we throw the cannibalized baby out and bring it a little closer to home.

I'd make the bet that everyone who has posted here so far in favor of Relativism would scream bloody murder if some nutcase were to track you down, kidnap you, and mercilessly torture you to an agonizing death.

Except for an extreme case of fetishism having nothing to do with morality, I doubt we'd find that okay with anyone.

Heck, a few of y'all get all disgruntled and "injured" on here when your feelings get hurt.

When & if the NWO comes along feeling all morally superior and correct, I don't wanna catch none of y'all crying about it.

And, psssst: None of you very nice relativists, pontificating in front of your computer, asked the baby now did ya?

Originally posted by The GUT
I'd make the bet that everyone who has posted here so far in favor of Relativism would scream bloody murder if some nutcase were to track you down, kidnap you, and mercilessly torture you to an agonizing death.

You seem to be positing that murder is objectively wrong as humankind holds it to be wrong. You could make a case for that within the constrains of humankind as the boundary of objectivity, but the scope of the OP includes God being the holder of these absolute moral truths.

Which begs the question

If murder is absolutely wrong then how does the source for that moral truth reconcile galactic collisions that potentially kill immeasurable life?

If your response is that it isn't murder since there was no intent as it was a natural phenomenon. This would imply it's only wrong when the human mind creates the intent to kill. If it depends on the human mind to be a moral truth, that is no longer objective in the scope the OP meant absolute morality to mean.

Originally posted by dpeacock
Premise 1 If God does not exist then absolute morale values do not exist

Even if a god does exist, that would just be his opinion of what morals should be like, that doesn't tell you whether it is absolute or not (inherent in nature/reality).

Originally posted by dpeacock
premise 2 If Absolute moral values exist then God exist

How so? Maybe this "absolute morality" is just evolution (a natural way of thinking to keep the species alive).

Originally posted by dpeacock
Ok so an absolute moral is a moral that remains the same all the time.

The only way to try and defeat it is to accept relative moral values which is like saying it is moraly equivelant to eat a deer as it is to eat a baby

This is obvious just you trying to personally attack people and make them look bad for not agreeing with you. As a society, we AGREED that eating other people (babies) is probably not what is most beneficial for our species, so in our society we made it illegal. This is a human social construct nothing to do with the absolute morality of a god.

Sorry, the OP follows flawed, or at best incomplete logic.

People here familiar with Rene Descartes? Considered the father of modern philosophy and also a great mathematician for whom the Cartesian coordinate system was named after.

Here's a summary from wikipedia of the third meditation in his great work Meditations on First Philosophy.

Meditation III: Concerning God, That He Exists

Descartes proposed that there are three types of ideas: Innate, Fictitious, and Adventitious. Innate ideas are and have always been within us, fictitious or invented ideas come from our imagination, and Adventitious ideas come from experiences of the world. He argues that the idea of God is Innate and placed in us by God, and he rejected the possibility that the idea of God is Invented or Adventitious.

Argument 1

1.Something cannot come from nothing.
2.The cause of an idea must have at least as much formal reality as the idea has objective reality.
3.I have in me an idea of God. This idea has infinite objective reality.
4.I cannot be the cause of this idea, since I am not an infinite and perfect being. I don't have enough formal reality. Only an infinite and perfect being could cause such an idea.
5. So God — a being with infinite formal reality — must exist (and be the source of my idea of God).
6.An absolutely perfect being is a good, benevolent being.
7.So God is benevolent...
8.So God would not deceive me, and would not permit me to err without giving me a way to correct my errors.

Argument 2
1. I exist.
2.My existence must have a cause.
3.The only possible ultimate causes are a) myself b) my always having existed c) my parents d) something less perfect than God e) God
4. Not a. If I had created myself, I would have made myself perfect.
5. Not b. This does not solve the problem. If I am a dependent being, I need to be continually sustained by another.
6. Not c. This leads to an infinite regress.
7. Not d. The idea of perfection that exists in me cannot have originated from a non-perfect being.
8. Therefore, e. God exists.

Descartes argued that he had a clear and distinct idea of God. In the same way that the cogito was self-evident, so too is the existence of God, as his perfect idea of a perfect being could not have been caused by anything less than a perfect being.[6]

Link

I recommend at least skimming that wikipedia page, or better read the original tex.

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17


The issue with Rene Descartes logic is the assertion that benevolence is necessarily an attribute of perfection. He gave no argument for that.

Then of course there is the issue of what benevolence really looks like. I would probably have a different understanding in some ways than Rene as to what is good and evil. Perhaps God has a wholly different understanding then both of us.

The problem with many religious people that use rational philosophical arguments for the existence of God, is that they don't provide sound argument for which God that would be. And that's important because the religious are not just trying to assert the existence of God, rather, the existence of a God that affirms their holy scripture. Which is, ultimately, attempting to explain what benevolence looks like.

reply to post by AfterInfinity


I have to disagree I've seen animals do some amazing things that would require a basis of moral.
So I personally wouldn't say morals are manmade.

reply to post by Lucid Lunacy


Well said, well said.

I like William James brand over Descartes actually, I put the frenchmen up as an example of what the OP was trying to do.

Another handy wikipedia summary, main points from The Varities of Religious Experiences

-Religious genius (experience) should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than religious institutions—since institutions are merely the social descendant of genius.

-The intense, even pathological varieties of experience (religious or otherwise) should be sought by psychologists, because they represent the closest thing to a microscope of the mind—that is, they show us in drastically enlarged form the normal processes of things.

- In order to usefully interpret the realm of common, shared experience and history, we must each make certain "over-beliefs" in things which, while they cannot be proven on the basis of experience, help us to live fuller and better lives.

en.wikipedia.org...

Originally posted by Lucid Lunacy
You seem to be positing that murder is objectively wrong as humankind holds it to be wrong. You could make a case for that within the constrains of humankind as the boundary of objectivity, but the scope of the OP includes God being the holder of these absolute moral truths.

Which begs the question

If murder is absolutely wrong then how does the source for that moral truth reconcile galactic collisions that potentially kill immeasurable life?

If your response is that it isn't murder since there was no intent as it was a natural phenomenon. This would imply it's only wrong when the human mind creates the intent to kill. If it depends on the human mind to be a moral truth, that is no longer objective in the scope the OP meant absolute morality to mean.

The question of "morality" only makes sense in the light of "intent." "Consciousness" is a prerequisite for the philosophical question.

If, before the baby is eaten by a cannibal, it puts a frog in it's mouth and unintentionally swallows it, the baby, while he ate the frog, isn't the same as the baby-eating cannibal whom has overlooked the fact that he himself wouldn't like to be boiled and eaten.

It's a fine point to be sure, Lucid, however:

1.) All we have is the human mind to reason this question.

2.) The baby objectifies the answer for some.

3.) My hypothesis insists you become the baby as it were.

4.) Outside of the aforementioned fetishism, the absolute is that one would consider themselves having been wronged if they were kidnapped and tortured to death.

5.) "Wronged" presupposes that there is a "right."

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17


First of all what 'is' perfection? God is perfect to 'whom'? Which God? Perfection is having all the qualities that YOU want, it will be different for everyone - conclusion - he just took the qualities he liked and maximized it. In other words, it is his own version of a god - an imagination.

reply to post by Sulie

One rule exists for all cultures, and faiths. It's call "The Golden Rule." Plain and simple. "Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you."

There is no golden rule, have you looked at your world lately...there is only 1 rule and its the rule of nature "survival for the fittest".

reply to post by arpgme


I think DesCartes argument is saying that the very idea of perfection indicates a God because he himself is not perfect and wouldn't be capable of such an idea. Definitely not stone solid logic, I was just putting up a famous approach to the task of the OP.

For most, the only thing that would provide a sufficient proof of God would be Christ flying in to Jerusalem on a winged horse. For me, even that wouldn't be enough. Although, I find myself a believer more often than not.

Logically proving God inevitably falls apart when using the imperfect tool of language, but I find the best cases are made by a common sense approach similar to DesCartes, and even the OP to a much less extent.